The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
I hope no one can be so very blind as to imagine that monarchy can be
acknowledged and supported in France upon any other basis than that of
its property, _corporate and individual_,--or that it can enjoy a
moment's permanence or security upon any scheme of things which sets
aside all the ancient corporate capacities and distinctions of the
kingdom, and subverts the whole fabric of its ancient laws and usages,
political, civil, and religious, to introduce a system founded on the
supposed _rights of man, and the absolute equality of the human race_.
Unless, therefore, we declare clearly and distinctly in favor of the
_restoration_ of property, and confide to the hereditary property of the
kingdom the limitation and qualifications of its hereditary monarchy,
the blood and treasure of Europe is wasted for the establishment of
Jacobinism in France. There is no doubt that Danton and Robespierre,
Chaumette and Barère, that Condorcet, that Thomas Paine, that La
Fayette, and the ex-Bishop of Autun, the _Abbé Grégoire_, with all the
gang of the Sieyèses, the Henriots, and the Santerres, if they could
secure themselves in the fruits of their rebellion and robbery, would
be perfectly indifferent, whether the most unhappy of all infants, whom
by the lessons of the shoemaker, his governor and guardian, they are
training up studiously and methodically to be an idiot, or, what is
worse, the most wicked and base of mankind, continues to receive his
civic education in the Temple or the Tuileries, whilst they, and such as
they, really govern the kingdom.
It cannot be too often and too strongly inculcated, that monarchy and
property must, in France, go together, or neither can exist. To think of
the possibility of the existence of a permanent and hereditary royalty,
_where nothing else is hereditary or permanent in point either of
personal or corporate dignity_, is a ruinous chimera, worthy of the Abbé
Sieyès, and those wicked fools, his associates, who usurped power by the
murders of the 19th of July and the 6th of October, 1789, and who
brought forth the monster which they called _Démocratie Royale_, or the
Constitution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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